Virtual reality soothsayers have approached the technology as though they are treading on sacred ground and ushering in not only a new era of spatial computing but a new level of consciousness. Conversations that start with talking about dumb little mini-games lead to rabbit-hole ethical discussions. But what if instead of being a harbinger of a future utopia or dystopia, VR was just a hell of a lot of fun?

This isn’t the first time a living donor has been used in successful uterus transplants. Surgeons at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden were the first to perform the procedure with a living donor in 2012 and have since performed the surgical procedure on nine women. Five successful births have resulted from the transplants.

Secret Conversations also offers a Snapchat-style self-destruct setting that you can adjust on a per-conversation basis. Open a secret conversation and then tap the stopwatch icon on the far right of the text entry area. This lets you set how long your messages remain visible on the other person’s device once they’re read. You can let them to last from 5 seconds to one day, or turn off the self-destruct setting altogether.

Even though Pebble already offered support for several popular health apps, the Pebble 2 is the company's first genuine attempt to make a more fitness-friendly device. The ability to track your heart rate, plus the addition of Pebble's new Health app, makes it so much easier to not only track your daily step count but also your passive heart rate and sleeping patterns. As long as you can put up with its unsophisticated design, the Pebble 2 combines the benefits of a fitness tracker with the core functions of a basic smartwatch at a reasonable price.

This was supposed to be the year virtual reality broke out. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, the first two high-end consumer devices on the market, arrived this spring to critical praise and preorders that sold out within minutes. Then… they plateaued. Despite some great experiences, months of near-total unavailability dulled the post-release buzz for both headsets, particularly the Rift. Neither the Rift or the Vive ecosystems produced a killer app that was big enough to push VR out of the margins, especially given the high cost of a headset and gaming PC. While 360-degree video has at least gotten a toehold in popular culture, the dream of sophisticated VR gaming — which arguably resurrected virtual reality in the first place — remains far away for most people.

However,
The Verge spoke to the man who said he owned the phone that
started smoking on the Southwest flight and that it was in fact a
Galaxy Note 7. The owner also said the phone was one of the
replacement devices that wasn't supposed to have the battery flaw
that caused Samsung to recall the Note 7.

If you want to know how far nanotechnology has come, you only need to ask the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It just awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to researchers Bernard Feringa, Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Sir J. Fraser Stoddart for their work on the "design and synthesis of molecular machines." All three have been instrumental to making nanomachines possible. Sauvage kicked things off in 1983, when he linked ring-shaped through a mechanical bond instead of the usual electron-sharing bond. Stoddart carried the torch when he slipped a moving molecular ring on to an axle in 1991, while Feringa built the first molecular motor in 1999.

Update 10/5/16 12:37pm EDT : In a statement from the Department of Justice, the arrested suspect is stated as being 51-year-old Harold Thomas Martin III of Glen Burnie, Maryland. In that statement, the DoJ claims to have found “highly classified information” and US government property “with an aggregate value in excess of $1,000,” in Martin’s home. Charges have been filed by the DoJ for unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, as well as theft of government property.

That's because the purpose of today's flight was to test out the New Shepard's escape system. It's a feature that will save future passengers on board the vehicle, in case the rocket suffers a major failure during flight. Blue Origin initiated the escape system about 45 seconds after takeoff today, causing a rocket motor to ignite underneath the New Shepard's crew capsule — the portion of the vehicle that's meant to carry people. The motor, which burned for about two seconds, successfully carried the capsule up and away from the rest of the rocket. The capsule's parachutes then deployed and lowered the vehicle gently down to the ground.

The New York Times reports that the FBI quietly arrested and charged an NSA contractor in late August on suspicion of stealing, and potentially disclosing computer code relating to an offensive hacking program designed to break into the network systems of adversarial foreign governments like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Microsoft Word is a beloved application used by typists all over the world. The program is packed with with all kinds of features, many of which you might never come across when you’re typing up a report, short story, essay, or whatever else you might be working on. To help you uncover some of the lesser-known tricks the software is capable of, we present a bunch of our current favorites. Here are 18 tricks that will turn you into a master of Microsoft Word.

Shopify was early to bring its merchants the ability to converse directly with customers via Facebook Messenger, and now it’s launching the ability to actually sell directly within messages between stores and customers.

According to the Times , the investigation focuses on whether the contractor "stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments." That could describe the NSA secrets detailed in a 2013 Der Spiegel report on the Tailored Access Operations program , which drew on classified documents but was notably not attributed to Edward Snowden. No source code was published as part of the report but it did detail numerous agency tools for compromising hostile networks, and it’s possible source code was supplied to journalists and never published.

At Bloomberg over the last year, we've been tailoring our coverage for this new reality. We've added a three-person technology team in Beijing, amplified our coverage in Europe and the Middle East and hired a group of reporters and editors in San Francisco who report on venture capital and its herd of high-flying unicorns, like Uber and Airbnb.

San Francisco genuinely is really foggy. It’s not a joke. The fog rolls in from the Pacific and floats up against the beach, stacking up above Twin Peaks until it drops like an ephemeral avalanche onto the city below … blasting through the Golden Gate as if sprayed from a fire extinguisher, erasing the Bridge, obscuring Alcatraz, turning Berkeley into an overcast Pacific Northwest knockoff even as it leaves Oakland in bright, shining California sunlight.

Every year since Steve Jobs’ death, Apple CEO Tim Cook has shared a tweet on October 5 celebrating his predecessor’s life and accomplishments. This year is no different. Cook chose a famous Jobs quotation to commemorate his friend’s passing five years ago today. Many other celebrities, journalists, and fans tweeted about Jobs and shared his words on social media.

The oldest human to have ever lived died at the age of 122—and that was nearly 20 years ago. A recent analysis of global demographic data suggests this may very well be the maximum age attainable by humans, and that it’s extremely unlikely anyone will ever live much beyond this advanced age. That is, unless we science the shit out of this problem.

While intriguing, Project Tango has always felt like an R&D project, destined to fade away after a few modest prototypes. The Phab2 Pro could change that perception, however. It's consumer hardware -- not a weird, bulky tablet or accessory. The phone is large though, with a 6.4-inch display and a 4050 mAh battery buried inside. At $499, it's also expensive. For the same money you could buy a phone that's more elegant and powerful (the Phab2 Pro uses a Snapdragon 652). Still, it's proof that Tango can be miniaturized without creating a truly horrific Frankenphone.

But not all Boosted Boards are created equal. The Single model ($1,000) comes with one drivetrain, a top speed of 18 miles per hour, and up to eight miles of range. It can also handle a grade of ten percent. The Dual model ($1,300) offers two drivetrains and 50 percent more wattage for a 20 miles per hour top speed, capability to do a 20 percent grade, but a range of just seven miles. The Dual+ model that I tried ($1,500) offers 2,000 watts, a top speed of 22 miles per hour, and can do do hills with a 25 percent grade. All the new models also let you swap out the battery—extras cost $100 a pop—so you can skate away the whole day away with minimal effort.

Until I had my hands on Playstation VR I couldn’t understand the need for any VR that wasn’t mobile. Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard are both “good enough” experiences with price tags a mere fraction of those of hulking VR systems like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. For most people the only VR you need is the kind you show off at parties and family gatherings, and never think about again.

Jobs recruited John Sculley in the early 1980s to help him grow Apple's business. At the time, Sculley was CEO of Pepsi and had helped it overtake Coca-Cola as the top beverage maker. Jobs famously convinced Sculley to take the CEO role at Apple in 1983 by asking if he wanted to "sell sugar water for the rest of his life" or if he wanted to "come with me and change the world." Sculley, who was close with Jobs before helping to oust him in 1985, served as Apple's chief executive for a decade until being forced out himself.

The Apple TV of old -- the one that doesn't have a tiny, Siri-enabled remote, or any desire to play games -- is no more. As MacRumors reports , the third-gen hardware is no longer listed on Apple's site, all but sealing its fate. Maybe you'll see one in a brick-and-mortar store -- but consider it a hanger-on. A remnant of the past, before tvOS and its fancy new apps were introduced. 9to5Mac has obtained an Apple email, sent out to employees and education partners, confirming the decision to kill the ageing hardware. From here on out, it's all about the new, fourth-gen Apple TV .

Since the launch of the fourth-generation Apple TV, there has been little reason to buy the previous model aside from its lower price. The new tvOS-powered model boasts improved functionality, has more available apps, and is fairly regularly updated. Since the launch of its latest streaming box, Apple has continued to sell the third-generation model, but now the aging streamer has finally been discontinued.

"Somebody that’s selfish," Cook continues, "doesn’t reply like that. I mean, here’s a guy, he’s dying, he’s very close to death because of his liver issue, and here’s someone healthy offering a way out. I said, ‘Steve, I’m perfectly healthy, I’ve been checked out. Here’s the medical report. I can do this and I’m not putting myself at risk, I’ll be fine.’ And he doesn’t think about it. It was not, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ It was not, ‘I’ll think about it.’ It was not, ‘Oh, the condition I’m in . . .’ It was, ‘No, I’m not doing that!’ He kind of popped up in bed and said that. And this was during a time when things were just terrible. Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them.

If he walked out of the woods one day and said he'd seen Sasquatch, Seacat said there's a good chance people would believe some of what he said. He's not one to just make stuff up, after all. Soon, as the news spread, others might claim to have seen Sasquatch themselves. Pretty soon, headlines.

With just days to go before the academy’s 6 October opening, Leopoldo Angrisani, a university professor who has helped organise the academy with Apple, excitedly mapped out a diagram of the new classroom, which is still under construction. The academy will be housed within the gleaming new buildings in Federico II’s new San Giovanni campus, an area comprised of three big buildings with glass facades – plus another building under construction – that starkly contrast with the rest of the neighbourhood.

Driving the first million miles took Google six years. The next million, just 16 months. As the regulatory environment continues to warm to the idea of putting driverless cars on city streets and highways, the miles are going to accumulate even faster. That’s a good thing for autonomous car-watchers everywhere.

Wow. After spending the last few days telling us that its New Shepard rocket was almost certainly going to be destroyed in today’s in-flight launch escape test, Blue Origin surprised everybody—even itself—with a clean landing of both booster and crew capsule.

The Google Pixel phone officially revealed on Tuesday wasn't a well-kept a secret prior to release, and as a result there are a large number of benchmarks available. They show the phone's raw performance lags far behind that of the iPhone 7, and is even defeated in single-core performance by the iPhone 6s and iPhone SE.
Early benchmarks for the Pixel and Pixel XL phones in Geekbench 4 have come in at around 4100 for multiple core performance, and 1580 for single core, consistent with the earliest numbers claimed to be for the phone from mid-September.
In contrast, the Apple iPhone 7 link text multiple core score is around 5600 regardless of model, with a single core score of around 3430.
For comparison, the iPhone 6s Plus has a multiple core benchmark of 4106, and a single core rating of 2508.
The processor in the Pixel XL is said to be running at the lower of the two speeds indicated by Google's technical specifications. However, the clock speed for the iPhone 7 was misidentified early on as well as a lower frequency than it actually peaks, so the benchmarks are thought to be accurate.

Amazon has just announced one more compelling reason to consider a Prime membership -- " Prime Reading ". As a Prime member, you now have unlimited access to over a thousand books, current issue magazines, comics, Kindle Singles, and more. With access from any device – including your phone, tablet, or Kindle – so you can read as much as you want, however you want, and whenever you want. Learn more about the new benefit and/or the other benefits of a Prime membership (free 2-day shipping, streaming movies & TV, unlimited music, photo storage, and more) at the Amazon Prime Home page . Prime memberships are $99/yr, but the 30-day free trial is typically where most people seem to start.

SuperCon 2016 will take place November 5th and 6th (2016) in Pasadena, CA . Talks and workshops will cover hardware, engineering, creativity in technical design, product design, prototyping (and more) and will be set against a backdrop of a new creative space, the Supplyframe DesignLab as well as the amazing Los Angeles College of Music venue, right next door!

Whoever takes on that challenge will be buying what has to be one of the most perplexing technology companies in modern history, a service that is arguably both a huge success and a massive failure at the same time. And that is not an easy thing to fix. Just ask Jack Dorsey.

It’s not a huge shock that Warner Bros. would take advantage of what, according to Jared Leto, is a giant pile of his craziest material. So, following in a trend designed to get people to buy several copies of the same movie, Suicide Squad is getting an extended edition. But as we’ve seen time and time again, nothing involving Suicide Squad can ever be simple.

There is a range of definitions of a smart city, but the consensus is that smart cities utilize IoT sensors, actuators and technology to connect components across the city. This connects every layer of a city, from the air to the street to underground. It's when you can derive data from everything that is connected and utilize it to improve the lives of citizens and improve communication between citizens and the government that a city becomes a smart city, said Esmeralda Swartz, head of strategy and marketing of the software business unit for Ericsson.

Google officially staked its claim as a bona fide hardware brand Tuesday with the launch of the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, the Daydream View virtual-reality headset and a bevy of other accessories for a more (Google-)connected life. So, at first look, how did the company do?

When creating Retina, Frere-Jones started by identifying the "essential gesture" of each glyph and amping it up to 11. For example, with a capital "R," the most unique element is the leg that juts out. "It's the most 'R' part of the 'R,'" explains Frere-Jones, saying that no other letter has anything like it. Likewise, the arm that crosses a capital "G" has nothing like it in the rest of the alphabet, and distinguishes it from an "O" or a "C." In a capital "D," there's not as much to work with—it's almost a "B" and almost an "O"—so it's fundamental asymmetry becomes its most unique identifying design characteristic.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 finally exists as more than just some well-meaning plans . Creator Michel Ancel has posted an Instagram teaser confirming that the sequel to the classic game has entered pre-production. In other words, his team is finally working on it. The images Ancel has offered in the run-up to the news don't reveal much (you can expect more of the first game's humanoid animals), but it appears that BG&E2 will take on a more realistic look than its cartoon-like predecessor, and will still be set in System 4. One thing's for sure: given that Ancel has long had ambitious plans for a follow-up, it'll be a while before you can sit down and play.

The Seattle School District has been contacted by a number of individuals concerned about an ongoing national social media trend related to “Scary Clowns.” There have been a few local news stories related to this and some of our students have received pictures of clowns. We are communicating to families to remind you and your student that if they see suspicious individuals while at school, please have them inform their teacher or principal immediately. We also ask you to report any threatening social media activity that involves Seattle Public Schools or our students to your school or the district’s Safety and Security Office at (206) 252-0707. This office is open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. We take safety seriously, and the security of our students is a top priority. We are working closely with Seattle Police Department to investigate all concerns related to this social media trend.

Daft Punk has only toured twice—once in 1997 and once 2007. So when there’s any chance that the robots could be booking new shows, fans typically freak the fuck out. It should be no surprise that when the mysterious website Alive2017.com popped up this week, fans freaked the fuck out.

A small number of users have experienced a problem with questionable website pop ups in their default browsers as a result of an isolated issue with an ad on our free tier. We have now identified the source of the problem and have shut it down. We will continue to monitor the situation.

While unveiling the Pixel and Pixel XL at its event yesterday, Google boasted about how the 12.3MP shooters of the handset have scored the highest rating ever given by DxOMark Mobile to any smartphone camera. In comparison, the website gave the iPhone 7’s new 12MP shooter a rating of 86 points.

Previously, Bethesda said that “Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work,” hence the cancellation. The developer appears to have been able to work out those issues with Sony over the following weeks. “Mods on PlayStation 4 will allow you to modify and create your own content by using our ‘creation kit,’” Bethesda says. “You will not be able to upload external assets with your PlayStation 4 mods, but you will be able to use any assets that come with the game, as most mods do. By creating a Bethesda.net account, you’ll be able to browse and try mods right from within the game.”

I think these claims can be disputed by taking a look at how similar technology has fared in the past. These “new” solutions are really dusted-off versions of technology architectures that lost out years ago. If you worked in this space 10 years ago, then left the industry and returned today, you might believe that virtually nothing has changed in that time.

While 80-odd titles is impressive, they vary in length and depth. Some, like Rise of the Tomb Raider: Blood Ties, are short VR experiences using a known franchise as a backdrop. A few, like World War Toons and XING, can be played with but don't require PSVR. It's still a hefty amount of content for gamers to devour. Unsure which to buy? Many of the list's heavy-hitters are featured in the demo disc bundled with the PSVR headset.